Embodiments of the subject matter disclosed herein generally relate to methods and systems and, more particularly, to mechanisms and techniques for integrating a compressor part and a pump part in a single system for compressing and pumping a given fluid.
During the past years the increased reliance on petrochemical products has generated not only a large increase in pollutant (e.g., CO2) emissions but also a need to have more compressors, pumps and other machinery that are used for processing oil and gas derivative products.
For example, in the field of Power Generation a large amount of CO2 emissions are produced. As the world is becoming more sensitive to the polluting emissions and the governments are moving towards a system that penalizes these emissions into the environment, it is more acute than ever to develop technologies that reduce the amount of pollution, the so-called green technologies. In a different field, Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR, which refers to techniques for increasing the amount of crude oil that can be extracted from an oil field) the need for transporting CO2 and/or a CO2 mixture in a more efficient and reliable way is also important for the industry and for the environment. According to EOR, CO2 and/or CO2 mixture from a storage facility is provided to a drilling location, either onshore or offshore for being pumped underground for removing the oil. As such, the transportation of CO2 and/or CO2 mixture is important for this field. With regard to power generation, the reduction of CO2 emissions is challenging as this fluid has a high molecular weight and its critical point is at a very low pressure (74 bar) at ambient temperature. In order to remove the CO2 that is usually produced as a gas by power generation, the CO2 needs to be separated from the other pollutants and/or substances that are present in the exhaust from the power plant. This step is traditionally called capture. After capturing the CO2, the gas needs to be compressed to arrive at a predetermined pressure, cooled down to change from gas phase to a dense phase, e.g., liquid phase, and then transported in this denser phase to a storage location. As will be discussed later, the dense phase depends on the type of fluid, the amount of impurities in the fluid and other parameters. However, there is no unique parameter that can quantitatively describe the dense phase for a fluid in general, unless an accurate composition of the fluid is known. The same process may be used for EOR, where the CO2 and/or CO2 mixture needs to be captured and then compressed and transported to the desired location for reinjection.
Thus, conventionally, after the capturing phase, a compressor is used to bring the initial CO2 in the gas phase to a dense phase or a liquid phase. Afterwards, the CO2 is feed to a pump that transports the fluid in the dense or liquid phase to a storage facility or to another desired location for reinjection. It is noted that for both the pump and the compressor to efficiently process the CO2, certain pressures and temperatures of the CO2 in the gas and dense/liquid phases have to be achieved as the efficiencies of the compressor and pump are sensitive to them. Therefore, traditional compressors and pumps need to be fine-tuned with respect to each other such that the precise phase of CO2 is transferred from the compressor to the pump. However, as the compressor and pump are traditionally manufactured by different providers, the matching of these two elements may be time intensive, requiring a lot of coordination between the manufacturers. Further, the existent systems that use standalone compressors and standalone pumps have a large footprint, which may be expensive.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide systems and methods that avoid the afore-described problems and drawbacks.